Opening with a special shoutout to the Jammu & Kashmir police, this is the fifth entry in the so-called Cop Universe envisioned by producer-director Rohit Shetty, following two prior Singhams and two spin-offs, 2018’s Simmba and 2021’s Sooryavanshi. Throwing back to the slaphappy mass cinema of the 1970s and 80s, 2011’s first Singham was a smalltown western of sorts, the saloon doors of its Goa copshop being the obvious giveaway. The sequels have got bigger and emptier; this one leaves us watching shopworn action tropes being wrapped in the flag of nationalism and listlessly if noisily tossed around.
The new film’s narrative pretext is that the criminal network tracked by Ajay Devgn’s supercop Bajirao Singham, now senior superintendent of Kashmir, has expanded outside India and beyond cackling erstwhile foe Jackie Shroff. The real main event, however, is watching guest stars grit their teeth and try to wrestle something – anything – out of this year’s most indifferent screenwriting. As Mrs Singham, Kareena Kapoor Khan makes wafting gestures towards artier endeavours before assuming her given place in this universe of damsel-in-distress. Deepika Padukone’s regional commander goes AWOL amid a lot of boysy crossover, not least real-life spouse Ranveer Singh reprising his gabbily irritating Simmba.
The uniform, at least, remains a snug fit for the eternally poker-faced Devgn, whose low energy invites a reading as nation-saving cool, but Shetty’s fawning over the character smothers dramatic interest and permits no concession to the complexities of the present moment. Middle-aged attempts to update the cop’s jargon – having Singham broach the concept of situationships, say – prove cringeworthy; the offhand Islamophobia is troubling. Shetty is surely hoping that holiday audiences will be forgiving when presented with a selection box of star names, but this puffed-up pablum doesn’t deserve a paying crowd so much as exasperated punctuation bolted to its title by way of a warning. We’re doing this again?!
• Singham Again is out now.
